


Spooky Scary Skeletons

by iaminlovewiththesky



Category: Mystery Skulls (Band)
Genre: Gen, Ghosts, Multi, Supernatural Elements
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-04
Updated: 2014-11-04
Packaged: 2018-02-24 01:24:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,973
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2563103
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iaminlovewiththesky/pseuds/iaminlovewiththesky
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Arthur finds a way to stop himself from pushing Lewis, at the lost of his own life. A year later, the remaining Mystery Skulls come back to investigate a mysterious orange house in the same area Arthur had died...</p>
            </blockquote>





	Spooky Scary Skeletons

**Author's Note:**

  * For [audyi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/audyi/gifts).



> I got a good friend of mine interested in Ghost, and when we were talking about it this basic idea came up. They urged me to write it, so... here it is! Feel free to give me any criticism!

Abandoned caves are always bad news. That should just be common knowledge. And yet, here they were, walking straight into a GLOWING GREEN cave. The glowing part at LEAST should tip them off, right?

Arthur sighed as he watched his best friends walk inside the opening of the cave with no hesitation. Sometimes he wondered how Vivi and Lewis could be so brave, and he especially wondered why HE couldn’t be. They’d all grown up together, right? Why couldn’t they have rubbed off on him more- instead of rubbing up on each other?

No, no- he shouldn’t be so petty about this. They’re his best friends. He should be HAPPY they’re together. Just because he feels like a third wheel now doesn’t mean he always will. It’s… selfish of him to be jealous. He walked up behind them, into the cave. Vivi turned to smile at him. “Oh, finally catching up?”

He threw on a half-hearted smile. “I’m right behind you.” Her smile became awkward to match his, and she looked forward again. That hurt, but he knew it was his own fault. He had to get the hell over this jealousy, before it started really messing up his friendships.

When they hit the split in the cave, they automatically split up in the usual way- Vivi and Mystery went one way, while Arthur and Lewis went the other. At the very least, Arthur was happy that hadn’t changed. As much as he loved Mystery, he’d rather go with Lewis.

They were only a few minutes into the walk down the cramped hall before Lewis spoke up. “So, ah, Arthur…”

“Huh?” He started when Lewis spoke.

“You’ve been… upset for a while now, right? Are you okay?” Lewis stopped walking and turned to face him.

For about half a second, Arthur considered telling him. Still, how do you tell your best friend that you’re jealous of him? “Don’t worry about it.” This time, his smile seemed more genuine. “I’m gonna deal with it myself.”

Lewis looked worried for another moment before sighing. “Well, I’m glad to hear that.” He grinned and patted Arthur on the back, hard enough that he stumbled forward and almost tripped on a rock.

“Heh, whatever. Let’s just get in and out of this creepy cave, okay?” Arthur gently pushed Lewis forward, to where they could see a bright opening at the end of the hall. “I don’t want to be here any longer than we have to be.”

Lewis chuckled and raised the torch before heading ahead. Arthur trailed a bit behind, feeling a bit nauseous as green smog filled the air around him. God, it’d be just his luck if this was poisonous. Still, Lewis didn’t seem affected, so maybe he was just imagining the sick feeling.

They got to the opening, only to find a cliff. They both peered over the edge to see a floor of spikes. At the bottom, he could just see a hint of blue- it looked like Vivi and Mystery’s hallway had ended at the spiked room. He could see Lewis bend over the side to yell down to Vivi, but even though he watched his mouth move, he couldn’t hear anything except his own thoughts. ‘It would be so easy to push him down.’ ‘He’s even leaning over already.’ _‘FUCK YOU, LEWIS.’_

Arthur watched as his arm reached out to shove Lewis, but just as he was about to touch his back, he came to his senses. Push Lewis? Why would he EVER do that? Still, his hand continued to reach out, and he realized he couldn’t feel it at all- it was like its own entity. He reached out with his right hand, and grabbed to pull it back.

Lewis hadn’t noticed- still didn’t, in fact. The arm was still reaching for him, though, and Arthur panicked, trying to step away from him. Only his right leg obeyed, however, and he tipped over- right off the edge, just as Lewis turned to look at him.

His left hand still reached out to grab at him, but he fell too quickly- far too quickly for him to pull Lewis down with him. As Arthur fell, the only thing he could hear was his heart beating fast as he got closer and closer to the spikes.

Finally, it stopped.

 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

It’d been mere days since she and Lewis had gotten together, but Vivi could already feel Arthur pulling away from them. Still, despite that, she was sure he would eventually cheer up. Especially since she and Lewis had something very special they wanted to tell him- something she was sure would make Arthur smile genuinely again. Even if it didn’t, Vivi was positive Arthur would be happy soon enough.

When she saw him jump off the cliff above, she was less sure.

It all seemed to happen in slow motion- first, she’d only heard Lewis yelling, so she’d looked up to where she heard the voice coming from. Her smile had widened when she saw him up there. It had quickly dropped when she saw Arthur off to the side, frighteningly near the edge. She’d opened her mouth to warn a caution, since he looked out of it, but before she could say anything, he’d jumped off the side.

She and Lewis had both watched in horror as he fell down quickly, landing directly onto one of the stalagmites. The last expression she saw on his face was the same smile she'd been dying to see.

For a moment, Vivi was absolutely stunned. Then, without her even meaning to, she ran towards the body. It was stuck halfway down the stalagmite, pierced straight through the heart. “Oh god, oh god…” She looked up past it, hoping to see Lewis, but he was missing from the cliff edge. For a second, she was struck with the horrific thought that he has PUSHED Arthur off, but she quickly shook it out of her head. She was further relived when he appeared at the opening of the cave she had come through, running as fast as he could towards her.

“Fuck, is he- oh, GOD.” He tugged her against him, trying to cover her eyes.

“We need- we need the- police, an ambulance, we have to call 911!” She pulled out of his grip and grabbed her phone with a shaking hand.

The next few hours were all a blur. The police had arrived, taken their story, and then left quickly, alongside the paramedics that had taken the body away. Vivi, Lewis, and Mystery had all piled into the Mystery Skulls van and driven to their hotel, all hoping that if they fell asleep, they would wake up to find it had all been a dream.

Of course, it wasn’t.

 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

It was almost a year later that the gang found themselves back in the town their best friend had died in. They were there for a paying job, for once- hired to investigate a mysterious house that had seemingly appeared out of nowhere. Lewis had driven the long way around in order to avoid that treacherous cave, but the small orange house had still given him the miserable feeling of guilt.

Why had he not helped Arthur? He’d known something was wrong for days. If he’d just paid more attention- if he’d talked to him more, or if the two of them had spent some quality time together, maybe he could have stopped him from killing himself. They had been best friends! He should have known something was wrong, worse than just the average bad mood. And that phrase Arthur had used… “I’ll deal with it myself”… it had been a dead giveaway. What kind of friend was he?

The orange house brought back all these bad feelings and more. He could tell that Vivi also felt the pressure, and wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible. Every one of their adventures for the past year had been less exciting, and more of an obligation.

The three of them got out of the car and looked up at the house. It was definitely no mansion- a two story home, painted a nearly florescent orange. The oddest thing about it, though, was its complete lack of windows. The only way in was a short door, so small Lewis had to duck to get inside.

There was music playing from upstairs- and god if that didn’t bring back memories, too. Lewis drove, and Vivi kept an eye on the map, but Arthur had always called dibs on the radio. He chose music to match his mood- upbeat when pleased, or slow when he was upset. This matched the slow, sad tunes he had chosen the night of his death. Lewis saw Vivi shudder, and put an arm around her shoulders.

The entire house seemed to pulse with the beat, but he couldn’t tell if it was all in his imagination or not. The only thing he could tell was that the music was definitely originating from up the stairs.

Vivi pulled out of his grip and headed upstairs, an unusual look in her eyes. He followed just as quickly, not wanting to let her out of his sight. Every door upstairs was shut and seemingly barricaded from the other side, but the music once again seemed to be even further upstairs. It had changed, though, now more upbeat, though the lyrics definitely said otherwise.

_Tonight I might just disappear…_

With a little exploration, they found a panel in the ceiling, leading to an attic. Lewis pulled Vivi behind him before heading up. There, on the top floor, was a coffin- a short, thin coffin, with an orange matching the garish color of the house.

As they entered, the attic door shut suddenly behind them, and the coffin slowly began to open.

 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Vivi pushed Lewis out of the way enough for her to stand next to him instead of behind. Her nervous feeling evaporated as her old lust for mystery came back in full force. She saw Lewis tugging on the attic door, but she was focused entirely on the opening coffin that bounced to the tune of the music.

It pushed all the way open, and inside rested a skeleton. It seemed like an average skeleton, except for the ribs outside of the clothing and the beating green heart floating an inch above the plain shirt it wore. And then, horrifyingly, it slowly lifted itself out of the coffin.

She jumped, surprised, and she could hear Lewis pulling on the door even harder, but her eyes were glued to the skull floating right about the neck of its hoodie. It also seemed to freeze when it noticed her, and its eye sockets started to glow with an orange light.

"W-wait, you..." Before she could try to finish her half-baked thought, another light flashed and it suddenly had yellowish flames shooting from its head, in the form of hair. Just as Vivi finally recognized him, Lewis threw open the door, grabbed her arm, and tugged her back down to the second floor. Her last glimpse of the skeleton was of his left arm reaching out for her.

 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Lewis ran as fast as he could, down the steps, around the corner, and right to the front door before he realized Vivi was struggling against him, trying to pull back.

"Lewis!" She hollared, and dug her heels into the ground.

He froze and turned around. "What?" Raising her voice was not something Vivi did, unless absolutely necessary. And from the frightened look in her eyes, it most certainly was.

"I think... I think that was Arthur." She looked back, as though the skeleton was going to float down the stairs after them. "He had... the hair, the music... What if that was Arthur's skeleton?"

"No. Why would his skeleton be here? It was buried back in his parent's town." Still, he had to admit, it would explain a lot. But it wouldn't explain enough.

"What if it's a ghost, and he's trapped here because he commited suicide? And he can't leave the area he died in? We've found other ghosts that can't leave where they died!" Her voice became more and more panicked. "We have to go back!"

"And... do what?" He whispered. "We can't save him. If he's a ghost..."

"At the very least, we have to apologize! We have to... We owe him that, right? Even if he's angry at us, we have to tell him we're sorry for not listening to him!"

He shifted his weight from leg to leg as he thought. If this was Arthur... That would mean his spirit was trapped here for a year, alone. Arthur could never be alone for more than a few hours, he'd go nuts if he had no one to talk to. His heart sank as he realized that he might have hurt his best friend even more by leaving town so fast after his death.

"Let's go back up." Before he even finished saying it, Vivi was already bolting up the stairs. He ran after her, the two racing back up to the attic.

 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

It'd been a year of silence after Arthur'd 'woken up' a few hours after his death. It was cold, and lonely, but he deserved it, didn't he? His death and the moments leading up to it was all fuzzy, but he could remember- he had desperately wanted to throw Lewis onto the spikes below. The mere thought of it disgusted him now, but the fact that he could even think that... He was glad they had left him, stopped thinking about him.

He had gone home to see his funeral- who wouldn't, really?- and he had been so heartbroken to see they didn't even show up. It was far more of a surprise than it should have been. After all, why would you mourn someone who tried to kill you? The rationalization didn't make him any happier, though, and he had gone back to the place where he felt pulled, the area he had died in.

The empty patch of land was the perfect place to live. He learned that when he dreamed about how his life could have gone, the house he imagined grew around him, athough it was all tinted orange in the same way he was. At first, he knew no living people could see his home, but the longer he stewed in his own sadness, the more people noticed and questioned it.

At one point, he had decided to seal himself in the attic, and try to sleep. To be honest, he knew he could move on- he could move into the light, to another world. But he couldn't. He couldn't do it by himself. If he could go to a 'better place', he wouldn't want to go without Lewis and Vivi and Mystery by his side.

He couldn't really sleep, but the blackness of the coffin was as close as he could get. He felt it pulse to the music that seemed connected to the odd green heart floating outside his body, but otherwise he felt nothing, saw nothing, and was nothing. That is, until he heard footsteps outside his resting place.

Arthur could feel it in his beating heart. It was the two of them. He couldn't help but open the door to his coffin, desperate to see them. It wasn't until he saw the look in Vivi's eyes that he realized they could see him too. He began to reach out for her, opened his mouth to say something, anything, but Lewis broke open the attic door and they both ran. Only Mystery stayed behind in the attic.

"Mystery..." The odd-looking dog sat at Arthur's feet, and smiled in a way no normal dog could smile. Still, Arthur almost smiled back. Mystery was always loyal to him, even if Vivi and Lewis hated his non-existant guts.

But the fact that Vivi and Lewis did hate him was enough for his green- no, now blue- no,wait, purple- heart, to crack. It flickered between blue and purple as the music pounded in his ears, but the cracks in it were as dark as night. He clutched at it and pulled it from where it was floating, into his hands.

As soon as he did, he noticed an alarming change- the hand holding the heart looked absolutely normal. Normal colored flesh instead of his bones, and his old rolled-up sleeves instead of the hoodie his skeleton had worn. Before he could question it too much, the door opened once more to reveal Lewis and Vivi, both out of breath.

 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

Vivi was even more breathless when she saw Arthur, looking exactly the way he had right before he died. "Arthur..?" She and Lewis both reached out for him at the same time, and she watched his face scrunch up the same way it always had when he felt like he was about to cry.

Instead of reaching back towards them, he took a step backwards, holding something behind his back. He looked more scared than happy to see him, and Vivi felt a pain through her heart. She knew they had hurt him badly, but so badly he didn't want to see them...?

"Oh god, Arthur..." Lewis's voice was choked up. "We're so sorry." She watched as Arthur's face scrunched up even more. "God, I'm so sorry, please..." He trailed off, and she could tell even he didn't know what the end of that sentence should be.

"Arthur... god, Arthur, I'm so sorry we didn't save you, please, don't hate us..." Her eyes misted up, and so she didn't notice his face turn to confusion.

"What...?" Her head shot up when she heard him speak. "Hate... you? Why would I... You hate me, but I couldn't..." He sniffed. "Hate you guys."

 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

As surprising as it was to see Arthur looking almost identical to how he used to look, it was even more shocking to hear those words leave his mouth. Lewis rubbed his eyes dry and looked straight at him.

"What do you mean, we hate you? You're our best friend. I know we... we didn't help you when you needed it, but we _never_ hated you!"

"Help me when I needed it?"Arthur parroted back. "Help _me_? I tried to KILL you, Lewis!"

Both Lewis and Vivi froze at those words, but only Lewis spoke up. "What...?"

Arthur's eyes watered. "I don't... remember why. But I remember. I wanted to kill you in that cave, Lewis. I reached out to push you, but when I came to my senses, I pulled away and fell off."

The three were all silent for a moment, but Vivi broke the quiet. "So you didn't try to kill yourself?"

"That's what you thought? Of course I wouldn't kill myself!" A few tears spilled from Arthur's eyes. "And I don't want to kill anyone else, either! But... I don't know why I wanted to hurt you, Lewis..."

Mystery barked loudly, shocking all three of them. At some point, he had moved behind Arthur, and he bit at his left arm. Arthur reflexively pulled it in front of him, away from Mystery, and that's when they all finally noticed the green tone of his arm.

"What the hell is that?" Arthur asked, confused. He stuck his hand out straight, and looked at it closely.

"It's the same color as the fog in the cave..." Lewis tilted his head, curious. He reached out to touch it, but just as he realized he probably wouldn't feel anything, his hand came in contact with cold skin. Arthur quickly pulled it away.

"Don't-" He stuck it back behind him. "Don't touch me." A flash of irritation crossed Lewis's face, but before he could say anything-

"Do you think..." The boys both fell silent. "Could you have been possessed by a ghost in the cave?"

"...what?" He looked at Vivi, a combination of fear and desperation in his eyes. "Do you think that's why I wanted to kill Lewis?"

"Well, you don't want to now, right? It was only in the cave?"

"Damn right." For a moment, he half-smiled, taking in the possibility.

Lewis's eyes lit up as well. "We never solved that mystery, either- there probably WAS something in there. Did you feel weird before you died?"

Arthur scrunched up his face as he thought. "I felt sick as soon as we entered... And maybe I felt something when we were walking through the hallway?"

"Then it probably was a possession!" Vivi grinned widely, and Arthur visibly relaxed. He almost dropped the object in his hands, and Lewis looked curiously at it.

"Is that a heart?"

 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

When Arthur looked down at his heart, held in his hands, it glowed brightly. Instead of flickering between colors, now it swirled both purple and blue at the same time, as well as a little bit of red where the cracks had been moments before. "It's... my heart. I think."

"Do those colors have to do with us?" Arthur flushed at Vivi's question, despite its innocence.

"Well... You guys are kind of more important to me than anything else. That's, ha, why I didn't move on to whatever's next. Even if you guys hated me, I still didn't want to move on without you." He started to tuck the heart into his pocket, but stopped himself. "Here." He put it out, between both of them, and they both took it at the same time.

"Huh?" Vivi looked at it before looking back up at him.

"Well, I don't know what's going to happen now. If I'm going to move on, or stay here, or go with you-"

"Come with us." Lewis said as though it was obvious, but Arthur kept speaking.

"-But I want you to keep that, no matter what."

"Well, DUH." Vivi placed it in Lewis's pocket. "But you ARE coming with us, right? I mean, if you can leave this place. After this whole house business, we're supposed to go down south to find out why some rancher's cows are going missing in broad daylight."

"I'm thinking cult." Lewis patted the heart in his pocket. "But it'll be a pretty long drive down there without music and conversation." He smiled at Arthur and reached out, pulling him between the two of them.

"Ha, well... It better just be a cult, and not some alien invasion. Last time we had to deal with extra terrestrials, I'm the one who ended up abducted." Arthur laughed a little awkwardly, but he could tell that Lewis and Vivi were relieved to see him actually smile.

"It wasn't even a real alien invasion!" Vivi took Arthur's right hand in her left, and he blushed. "And besides, you were the one who ran headfirst into the glowing light."

"I didn't notice it!" He protested half-heartedly, more focused on how Lewis's right hand curled around his left.

"It was a bright, glowing red light, Arthur. At some point, you should have seen it." Lewis began leading them down the steps.

 

\-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

 

It took only a few minutes for the gang to pack up the van, but when they had finished and turned around to see the house, it was missing. Vivi and Lewis had looked over at Arthur, but he just shrugged, as confused as they were. Mystery jumped in the backseat, and Vivi and Arthur grabbed the front passenger seats. For a moment, it almost seemed exactly the same as it always had.

When Lewis felt the still-beating glass heart in his pocket, though, it was obvious things were different. Arthur was still dead, and conversations would have to take place... but at the end of it all, they were all still together, which he decided mattered far more than any small details.


End file.
